


Interlude III

by hoc_voluerunt



Series: SPQR [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Rome, Bath Houses, Bathing/Washing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoc_voluerunt/pseuds/hoc_voluerunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The baths of Gryllus are no place for a friend of Celatus' to attend; he takes Vannus to a relaxing session at the grand bath house of Agrippa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude III

**Author's Note:**

> Latin translations in mouseover text, or in [this post](http://hoc-voluerunt.livejournal.com/39859.html).

            Celatus couldn’t believe his ears when he heard which baths Vannus attended – and even then hardly often, as the ex-soldier was well-versed in the merits of a quick, cold wash in the courtyard. Yes, it made for a pleasant sight, if Celatus judged from the way Hirtia’s slave-girls offered to help with the water, and the women from the surrounding flats watched appreciatively from the windows; but Celatus was not going to be complacent about living with someone who didn’t know the pleasures of an expensive bath. A Briton, and a freedman’s son, he could handle, if not without a little early reticence: but the delights of a more extravagant place were not to be missed, not when they were so freely available.

            When Celatus thought to ask, however, Vannus’ answer was immediate and firm.

            “No.”

            Celatus frowned. “Why not?”

            Vannus snorted, and focused back on where he was mincing up onions and cucumbers for lunch. “Attend the baths, with you?” He poked at the snails frying in a shallow pot over the fire, and picked up the cleaver again. “Not if Tartarus itself were threatening.”

            Celatus looked offended. He raised his voice to be heard over the _crack_ s of Vannus’ chopping. “Vannus,” he said, with quiet relish at use of the name, “the health and hygiene benefits of a _proper_ bath house are not to be matched –”

            “I’m not going, Celatus,” said Vannus, in a pause in his work. “There’s to be no argument on that.”

            Celatus changed tack. “You call yourself a Roman, yes?” he asked. Vannus scowled at him.

            “We’re not getting into this.”

            “Well, how can you call yourself a Roman without having been to a _proper, Roman_ bath?”

            “I _go_ to the baths,” Vannus argued, “you know that. I attend regularly.”

            Celatus scoffed. “You attend the _balnea Grylli_ in the valley once a week.”

            “And I am _not interested_ in going to yours.”

            “Why not?” Celatus cried, affronted.

            “Because I can’t afford it, and I know already that any place you attend will be full of unbearable old senators and their mincing slaves, and I’m quite happy not to have those kinds in my life.”

            “Vannus, I have withstood all your charming plebeian quirks with outstanding patience so far –” Vannus snorted, but Celatus was undeterred. “Will you not indulge me this one, small favour? I promise, you’ll feel better for it.”

            Vannus sighed, with closed eyes, and set his cleaver down on the tabletop. “Why are you so fixated on this?” he asked, across the pile of mangled vegetables.

            “Vannus.” He sat across the table from where Vannus stood, and set his palms apart on the wood as if entering dangerous negotiations. His stare was mock-intense and concentrated in the face of Vannus’ lack of amusement. “I know you to be a sensible man. I ask this _one_ favour of you: that you accompany me to the _Thermae Agrippae_ tomorrow, and just sample it. I simply cannot live in good conscience knowing you to have been deprived of the experience.”

            Vannus held his gaze for a long moment – then sighed in resignation, as his shoulders slumped.

            “All right,” he conceded. He picked up his cleaver, then brandished it in the direction of Celatus’ smirking face. “But just this once!” he added. “And only if you promise that it will make you stop pestering me.”

            Celatus’ leonine grin did not fade.

 

            The excitement of Nero’s death had calmed with the passing of time, and the official declarations and acceptance of Galba’s rule, and so the aristocracy and courtiers had emerged once more from the villas and holes to which they’d retreated. As such, Vannus made for a wonderfully unusual sight in a bath house like that of Agrippa: he hadn’t quite kept up his military physique, but it, along with his stern commoner’s distaste, still made a pleasant change from all the corpulent senators and tubby, equite types who were accustomed to frequent the place. He eyed the keeper of the house with a wary eye when they entered, and wasn’t entirely comfortable with all the well-kept slaves scurrying about, half hidden in the steam; nonetheless, he went along as Celatus indicated, and made no complaints apart from a few disapproving and cynical looks. He stripped with far more efficiency than the others there, shivered delightfully through the scraping, and plunged happily into the cold pool with much more courage than Celatus. Later, having passed through the warm room with less leisure than Celatus would have liked, the Briton sank into the hot bath with a long groan of satisfaction.

            “All right,” he admitted, as he leant back against the edge of the bath with closed eyes and arms akimbo on the rippled marble tiles – “this is _definitely_ better than Gryllus’ place.”

            Celatus smirked from his perch perpendicular to his friend, though Vannus couldn’t see it. “The light is poor, the pools cramped,” he rumbled, “and the water barely lukewarm – both hot _and_ cold. I can imagine this makes for a nice change.”

            One eye of Vannus’ pried itself open to peer at him sidelong. “I’m wary to ask how you know that.”

            “I make it my business to know of every bath house in the city,” Celatus sniffed. “Places like this often make for excellent clues in the detection of crime. Such houses of iniquity, sociality…” He smirked again. “The gossip of a bath-keeper’s slaves can be priceless.”

            Vannus shook his head, his eyes sliding shut once more. “You’re unbelievable,” he said, but he was still smiling, and he stretched out luxuriantly in the water. His tanned fingers flexed against the marble, and his curling and uncurling toes stirred the water against Celatus’ legs. “Oh, I could get used to this…”

            “Then you’ll be accompanying me more often?” said Celatus, with quirked brow. Vannus snorted.

 _“Mithras,_ no. I don’t have time for this kind of indulgence, not between working for Seia and keeping you from killing yourself or setting fire to half the via Pistoris while no one’s looking.”

            Celatus scowled, but ignored the light-hearted jab. He fell silent as the heat sank into his limbs, and less-than-surreptitiously watched Vannus, his eyes trained particularly on the spiked scars on his left shoulder and leg, the one new and familiar, the former still only glimpsed in their acquaintance so far. It was nestled just under the outer end of his collarbone, an irregular and ragged thing, hardly as neat as Seia’s work on his leg. Celatus was fascinated by it – as by so many things about his friend – and he wondered if there was a corresponding mark on the back, and how an injury like that had gained his friend a dishonourable discharge, and if Vannus would oblige to show him at length.

            “Why are you staring at me?” Vannus asked in a low, contented voice. Celatus blinked and glanced back up at the Briton’s closed eyes.

            “I wasn’t staring.”

            It was Vannus’ turn to smirk. “Yes you were,” he said, completely calm. “Is it my shoulder?”

            Celatus decided on frankness. “Is there an exit wound?”

            With an expression of toleration and indulgence, Vannus slid forward in his seat, and submerged himself for a moment before surfacing by Celatus. As he shook the hair from his eyes and ran his hand through the short, sopping strands to push his fringe back from his forehead, he stood with his back to Celatus, and craned his neck to one side to stretch the skin over his shoulder.

            “Not much of one,” he said, in a conversational tone, and with a resolute ignorance for the scowls they were receiving from the heavy, older man lounging in the opposite corner of the pool. Celatus stood as well, with the water coming up to his ribs, as Vannus explained: “The arrowhead never made it all the way through. Murena – you’ve not met him – he was beside me in the formation, and assisted on operations. He got the shaft out easily enough, but I had to prise out the head myself.”

            “Yourself?” Celatus was startled. He saw the corner of Vannus’ mouth lift.

            “Only surgeon in the cohort,” he remarked. “Hurt like Hades, but here I am.”

            Celatus raised one hand to hover over Vannus’ back. “May I?”

            Vannus glanced over his shoulder. “Go ahead,” he said, with an absent wave of his hand. “But pinch me and I’ll drown you.” Celatus spluttered out an elegant laugh, and Vannus grinned, and added: “Like a scrawny, snobbish puppy.”

            Unable to keep the stunned amusement from his face, Celatus pressed his fingers to the old wound on Vannus’ back, to test the skin and memorise the sensation of the unusual scarring. He laid one, long hand over Vannus’ shoulder and trailed the other under his arm, raising it slightly and feeling the shift of muscle beneath.

            “Is there any obstruction to your movement?” he asked, genuinely curious. He hadn’t noticed anything significant, beyond a certain stiffness; but then, Vannus had hardly been doing acrobatics in his presence.

            Vannus let his arm be lifted at his side. “Not overmuch, no,” he answered, wincing as his elbow inclined towards the vertical. “But there’s a reason why I couldn’t keep fighting, you know, and it wasn’t just the waxing limp.” He grimaced over his shoulder as the limb stretched, and Celatus felt abruptly dirty, despite their location, as if he’d touched something _nefas_. He dropped Vannus’ arm, which splashed a little on the surface of the water before Vannus caught himself. Frowning in inquiry, he turned to Celatus.

            “I –” Celatus tried to explain; “I was hurting you.”

            “It was nothing,” Vannus assured him, but Celatus still felt unclean.

            “I shouldn’t have pried –”

            “I let you do it, Celatus,” Vannus insisted. “If you were really hurting me, trust me, you would have known.”

            Celatus breathed through his nose, but made no reply. Vannus shook his head at his friend.

 _“ Age,”_ he sighed, and moved back to the edge of the pool. “I believe I saw a masseuse.”

 

            As it turned out, a massage did wonders to relieve Celatus’ sudden tension: though he wasn’t certain whether that was from the pressure on his muscles or the obvious pleasure Vannus was finding in the ministrations on his injured shoulder.

            “They’re – _ohh –”_ he remarked, lying on his front and moaning periodically; “they’re very good here, Celatus, by all the gods – _mmm...”_ He craned his neck to peer up at the woman who was pressing at his upper arm. “Were you trained somewhere special?”

            The woman smiled just a little. “Captured by the Third Augustan, sir,” she said in answer. “I spent some time assisting their surgeon before being sent to Rome for sale: I know a little something about the body.”

            Vannus hummed in approval as his eyes drifted shut again. Celatus watched his reactions with singular intent.

            “Were you sold straight to here?” the Briton asked.

            “No, sir, I was bought by an equite family first,” replied the masseuse, oiling between Vannus’ shoulder-blades. “They weren’t comfortable with an African in the household, though, so I was put up for auction within the year.”

            “Idiots,” Vannus mumbled. “And then?”

            “Went to a nice little plebeian family for a while… Only slave they had, they were quite proud of that. Worked me a bit hard, but I can’t complain.”

            Celatus scoffed. “Yes you can,” he grumbled. “Your lot always do, you just make sure your owners aren’t listening.”

            Vannus’ eyes snapped open to glare at his friend, but he said nothing.

            “When did they sell you?” he asked the slave.

            “Oh, their house was destroyed in the fire,” she answered, “and them with it, unfortunately. No will, no manumission; so I went back on the market for a while until I ended up here. They thought I’d make a nice novelty.” She smirked. “Turns out, they were right.”

            Across from Vannus, Celatus smiled from under the ministrations of his own masseuse. “Umbra here is somewhat famed for her massage technique,” he mumbled into his arm. “I asked for her especially for your benefit.”

            Vannus let out a cynical snort. “Inventive name.”

            Umbra laughed with him, pressing another groan out of her charge. “They don’t tend to give us much thought.”

            Vannus stiffened almost imperceptibly. “Us?”

            “Forgive me for saying, but you’re hardly Latin-born,” Umbra chuckled. “Where are you from?”

            “My parents were Britons,” Vannus answered, in clipped-off tones, “but I was born in Rome.”

            Umbra nodded in understanding. “Ah, I could have told you that,” she said, with mock wisdom. “You’re as Roman as they come, after all.”

            “What makes you say that?”

            “Well, sir, I’ve never had a more stoic client.”

            Celatus was laughing before Vannus even began, and it was mere moments before they were both shaking with mirth, as Umbra let a satisfied expression spread across her face above them. The slave hardly expected Vannus’ thanks, but she got them anyway; and Celatus didn’t need to hear the gratitude in his friend’s eyes, but he was told it nonetheless.

            They stayed not very much longer. Vannus joked with Celatus and the slaves as they were rubbed down, as he swung his left arm experimentally with a faint smile in his eyes. After they’d dressed, he eyed the extensive weights, and the pool and tracks beyond the garden, with enough interest, as they left, to decide for Celatus that he would indeed be bringing his friend back.

            “I take it the Agrippan has your approval, then?” Celatus asked with a smirk as they moved away from the Campus Martius and back towards the city wall.

            “I’m still not coming with you all the time,” Vannus retorted; but it was with a breath of laughter and a satisfied smile on his face. Celatus glanced back at Vannus’ shoulder, and remembered the scars he’d examined, and let the memory be engulfed by Vannus’ contentment.

**Author's Note:**

> Gryllus' "dark and confined" baths are taken from Martial's ill report (Epigrams, 2.14), though they are theorised to have been in the Campus Martius, and not the valley below the Aventine where I've put them. Of course, the baths of Agrippa are a little more well-known, though I may have fudged a little in terms of architecture and bathing strategies, and I totally made up the bit about Umbra, the masseuse.


End file.
